Immigrant Women in the U.S. Workforce

The Mixed Economic Progress of Immigrants

Robert F. Schoeni, Kevin F. McCarthy, Georges Vernez

This report examines whether the economic well-being of male immigrants to the United States improves substantially over time, details differences in economic progress of immigrants from different countries of origin, and assesses the impact of educational attainment on immigrants' earnings. Analyses are based on Public Use Micro Samples of the 1970, 1980, and 1990 censuses. Since one in four California workers is an immigrant, findings for California are emphasized and compared to those for the nation. Immigrants to California are a heterogeneous group. Most are poorly educated and have low English proficiency, but substantial proportions are highly skilled or were educated in the United States. The largest immigrant group (37 percent) was born in Mexico; followed by 12 percent in Japan, Korea, or China; 9 percent in the Philippines; and 8 percent in Central America. Earnings of immigrant workers relative to native-born workers have declined substantially over the past 20 years, and immigrants have begun to dominate the lowest-skill jobs. Immigrants' economic progress over time varies considerably by country of origin. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese workers enter the U.S. labor market with wages much lower than native-born workers but reach parity in 10-15 years. Europeans enter with wages similar to natives and continue at parity. Mexicans enter with very low wages and experience a persistent wage gap. Although education is a powerful predictor of earnings, substantial differences in earnings profiles persist after adjusting for education. Finally, the rate of wage growth relative to native-born workers has not changed over time for any immigrant group. Contains 40 references and many data tables and figures. (SV)

Statement of Georges Vernez, Director, Education and Human Resources Program, RAND, Before the Select Committee on Statewide Immigration Impact, California State Assembly, September 22, 1993

Georges Vernez

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Public Works as Countercyclical Fiscal Policy

Georges Vernez

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Opening and Closing the Doors

Evaluating Immigration Reform and Control

Frank D. Bean, Georges Vernez, Charles B. Keely

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Toward a K-20 Student Unit Record Data System for California

Georges Vernez

To improve the progression of students through the educational system and to improve education quality, California needs a robust data system that can track an individual student's progress from kindergarten to college and beyond. The authors review California's multiple existing student data systems and identify steps that could be taken toward building and maintaining an integrated student data system for the state.

Immigration in a Changing Economy

California's Experience--questions and Answers

Kevin F. McCarthy, Georges Vernez

International immigration to California has steadily increased over the past 30 years. Some observers are seeing the extreme diversity of California's population as the harbinger of where the nation is headed. The culmination of a comprehensive study of how immigration has changed over the past three decades, this book assesses the impact immigrants have made on California's economy and culture.

Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men

The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War: With a New Introductory Essay

Eric Foner

Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men has been recognized as a classic, an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the causes of the American Civil War. A key work in establishing political ideology as a major concern of modern Americanhistorians, it remains the only full-scale evaluation of the ideas of the early Republican party. modern American historical writing.

Nickel and Dimed

On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich

Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity. Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.

Chutes and Ladders

Navigating the Low-wage Labor Market

Katherine S. Newman

Now that the welfare system has been largely dismantled, the fate of America's poor depends on what happens to them in the low-wage labor market. In this timely volume, Katherine S. Newman explores whether the poorest families benefited from the tight labor markets and good economy in the late 1990s. More than a story of the shifting fortunes of the labor market, "Chutes and Ladders" asks probing questions about the motivations of low-wage workers, the dreams they have, and their understanding of the rules of the game.

Creative Union

The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939-1953

Kiril Tomoff

Central to Tomoff's argument is the institutional authority and prestige that the musical profession accrued and deployed within Soviet society, enabling musicians to withstand the postwar disciplinary campaigns that were so crippling in other artistic and literary spheres."--Jacket.

Poverty in America

A Handbook

John Iceland

Praise for the first edition: “Highly readable. Will very likely become a standard reference for students of poverty.”—William Julius Wilson, author of When Work Disappears “With succinct and engaging prose, Poverty in America covers the gamut —from theoretical issues to measurement to history to public policy—better than any other book out there right now.”—Dalton Conley, author of Honky

King Leopold's Ghost

A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

Adam Hochschild

Documents the plundering of the territory.

Not Working

Latina Immigrants, Low-wage Jobs, and the Failure of Welfare Reform

Alejandra Marchevsky, Jeanne Theoharis

Not Working chronicles the devastating effects of the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended welfare as we know it. For those who now receive public assistance, “work” means pleading with supervisors for full-time hours, juggling ever-changing work schedules, and shuffling between dead-end jobs that leave one physically and psychically exhausted. Through vivid story-telling and pointed analysis, Not Working profiles the day-to-day struggles of Mexican immigrant women in the Los Angeles area, showing the increased vulnerability they face in the welfare office and labor market. The new “work first” policies now enacted impose time limits and mandate work requirements for those receiving public assistance, yet fail to offer real job training or needed childcare options, ultimately causing many families to fall deeper below the poverty line. Not Working shows that the new “welfare-to-work” regime has produced tremendous instability and insecurity for these women and their children. Moreover, the authors argue that the new politics of welfare enable greater infringements of rights and liberty for many of America's most vulnerable and constitute a crucial component of the broader assault on American citizenship. In short, the new welfare is not working.

From Working Daughters to Working Mothers

Immigrant Women in a New England Industrial Community

Louise Lamphere

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Non-English Speaking Background Immigrant Women in the Workforce

Caroline Alcorso

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Intersectional Class Struggle

Theory and Practice

Michael Beyea Reagan

This innovative study, explores the relevance of class as a theoretical category in our world today, arguing that leading traditions of class analysis have missed major elements of what class is and how it operates. It combines instersectional theory and materialism to show that culture, economics, ideology, and consciousness are all factors that go into making “class” meaningful. Using a historical lens, it studies the experiences of working class peoples, from migrant farm workers in California’s central valley, to the “factory girls” of New England, and black workers in the South to explore the variety of working-class experiences. It investigates how the concepts of racial capitalism and black feminist thought, when applied to class studies and popular movements, allow us to walk and chew gum at the same time—to recognize that our movements can be diverse and particularistic as well as have elements of the universal experience shared by all workers. Ultimately, it argues that class is made up of all of us, it is of ourselves, in all our contradiction and complexity.

Women and Politics

A Quest for Political Equality in an Age of Economic Inequality

Barbara Burrell

This textbook for courses on women and politics thematically integrates two profound historical developments focusing on women's political participation in contemporary public life in the United States. The second wave of women’s rights activism has now spanned a half century producing a revolution in women’s presence and influence in the public realm of American life. Over the course of this same era, however, a second phenomenon of rising economic inequality has also dramatically changed the American landscape. Burrell’s text uniquely examines the effect of the age of inequality on women’s advancement toward economic and political equality and in turn how policy initiatives of the women’s movement have addressed inequality issues. Students will come to better understand what’s at stake in the politics and policy issues from the women’s rights movement to the "war on women" debate. Explaining a diverse set of issues and viewpoints, Burrell brings a fresh approach to the engagement of women in the public realm over the past half century. Framing this activism in the great economic divide of the same time period provides a thought-provoking, challenging, and broad thematic approach to this history. The text chronicles the many diverse types of actions women have taken in the contemporary era to achieve gender equity, empowerment, and a greater public voice. Women—both liberal feminist and conservative— have run for and been elected to positions of leadership at all levels of government. Women have formed organizations to lobby for equity in employment and education, in the military and to promote reproductive rights. They have engaged in unconventional political activities marching against and protesting the actions and policies of economic corporations and governmental institutions. Women with few economic resources have joined together to challenge local power structures. In addition to efforts to improve the lives and status of women in the United States, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have formed to promote global women’s rights. Readers of this text will gain a great appreciation of the multiple political voices of American women and the challenges to continued unequal voices.

Cultures of Opposition

Jewish Immigrant Workers, New York City, 1881-1905

Hadassa Kosak

Looks at the forging of a new Jewish political culture at the turn of the century.